America’s First ‘Non-Binary’ Person Switches Back: ‘There Is No Third Gender’

A man who lived as a transgender woman and then became America’s first legally recognized “non-binary” person now says it all was a sham and that he wants to live as a man again.

Jamie Shupe, an Army veteran who made worldwide headlines due to his non-binary status in 2016, writes in a Daily Signal column that he convinced himself he was a woman during a mental health crisis in 2013. The medical profession affirmed his status, and then did so again when he wanted to become non-binary – that is, neither male nor female.

In 2016, an Oregon judge granted his request to recognize him as non-binary. The Guardian, a United Kingdom newspaper, ran a story about him under the headline, “Jamie Shupe becomes first legally non-binary person in the US.”

But in his Daily Signal column, Shupe says he didn’t need affirmation from the medical community. He needed help.

“There’s abundant online literature informing transgender people that their sex change isn’t real,” Shupe writes. “But when a licensed medical doctor writes you a letter essentially stating that you were born in the wrong body and a government agency or court of law validates that delusion, you become damaged and confused. I certainly did.”

Four years ago, he writes, he penned a column in The New York Times about his status as a transgender woman. Then, a year later, he decided to become non-binary – and the media and LGBT organizations once again followed his every move.

“I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary – and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female,” Shupe writes. “Now, I want to live again as the man that I am. I’m one of the lucky ones. Despite participating in medical transgenderism for six years, my body is still intact. Most people who desist from transgender identities after gender changes can’t say the same.

“My psyche is eternally scarred, and I’ve got a host of health issues from the grand medical experiment.”

Shupe’s case helped lead Oregon to become the first state with a non-binary “X” option on birth certificates. Eleven states, Shupe writes, followed in recognizing a non-binary status.

“Two fake gender identities couldn’t hide the truth of my biological reality,” he writes. “There is no third gender or third sex. Like me, intersex people are either male or female. Their condition is the result of a disorder of sexual development, and they need help and compassion.”

In retrospect, Shupe writes, it was too easy to become transgender. The medical profession simply went along with his desires, he says.

“After convincing myself that I was a woman during a severe mental health crisis, I visited a licensed nurse practitioner in early 2013 and asked for a hormone prescription. ‘If you don’t give me the drugs, I’ll buy them off the internet,’ I threatened. Although she’d never met me before, the nurse phoned in a prescription for 2 mg of oral estrogen and 200 mg of Spironolactone that very same day.”

Shupe believes his attraction to a transgendered life was born from a childhood of sexual and physical abuse. He also battles PTSD, having served in the military for 18 years.

“I should have been stopped, but out-of-control, transgender activism had made the nurse practitioner too scared to say no,” he writes. “... Only one therapist tried to stop me from crawling into this smoking rabbit hole. When she did, I not only fired her, I filed a formal complaint against her. ‘She’s a gatekeeper,’ the trans community said.”

He never looked like a woman, he says.

“Despite having taken or been injected with every hormone and antiandrogen concoction in the VA’s medical arsenal, I didn’t look anything like a female,” he writes. “People on the street agreed. Their harsh stares reflected the reality behind my fraudulent existence as a woman. Biological sex is immutable.”

Shupe acknowledges he “played” his “part in pushing forward this grand illusion.”

“I’m not the victim here,” he writes. “My wife, daughter, and the American taxpayers are – they are the real victims.”